But portraiture also offered a shortcut to signaling virtue. There was a direct correlation between the visible content of a painting and the identity of its creator. “Black guy on the wall: Boom. ‘I’m not a racist,’” says the dealer Stefan Simchowitz. Simchowitz was the seller of Clottey’s painting at Phillips but does not consider himself a part of the group in question. “‘I don’t have a Black friend,’” he goes on, impersonating the buyers, “‘but a Kwesi Botchway is in my living room.’”
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